RELIGION ARGUES INCORRECTLY THAT YOU CANNOT BELIEVE IN JUSTICE AND LOVE PROPERLY WITHOUT A JUST AND GOOD GOD

It seems morality is either just human convention/opinion or something more, something real.  Religion answers that morality needs a foundation, God.

Not everything needs a foundation. It can be its own foundation.  Do you really care why 1 and 1 are 2.  You don't.  You just get on with it.  As with morality, it can just float.  The argument, "morality is not real unless it has a foundation, unless God validates and grounds it", is cynical.  A baby is sick and needs help.  That is just important.  If you think the foundation of this principle is what really matters or matters most then there is something twisted about that.  If you think it cannot matter without needing a foundation then clearly you are saying the baby does not matter unless some foundation decides that it does. 

A film based on fantasy not real life has no foundation but is still a film.  It is its own foundation.  Morality can be morality without an outside or related foundation.

A decent person will think morality justifies itself. You will see a baby needing your help as showing you need no justification. You will not want it either if you are really good. The baby does not know what morality is but that does not stop him needing your help. The needing is real no matter what you think of morality. In any case morality is more important to the victim not the helper. It is the victim who needs morality to be.  If morality exists, it comes from the baby needing help.  Nothing else.  Too often it is about the helper wanting a moral framework so that they can think they help their own soul by taking action for the baby.  Thus despite appearances they make it about themselves.  Jesus had that same attitude, when he said not to gain the whole world - by good works obviously for how else is it going to be done? - and suffer the loss of your own spirit/soul ie your righteous identity.

If good cannot be good unless somebody sees it is, or decides it is, then it does not matter if that person is perfectly good enough. It only matters that someone is good enough to assess the action. To see something as good is to be good in the first place. Now if it is not good in itself you cannot see it as good. Even if you wrongly see it is as good it is because you fail to see that it is using good to mask its evil side so it is still the good you see. If good cannot exist unless somebody decides it is good then perhaps the being should not bother deciding.

A quote from Andrew Sepielli, "Ethical values can be both objective and knowable - torture really is wrong - yet not need any foundation outside themselves." 

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle said that the definition of good is whatever will make you reach your potential. This reminds us that morality is not about theory or doctrines but about putting respect for people and their potential into practice. It is not about God and indeed God has achieved his potential so we cannot really be moral to him. Or for him.  Yet for religion God is the end goal meaning that you cannot be good without God. The definition of evil is choosing a good that is not as good as it can be.  Do I mean religion is on some level evil?  YES.  By its own definition and every other.

PURPOSE AND DIGNITY

Religion says the alternative to saying there is no God is that we are just animals so it does not matter what we do. Yes but surely if God has plans that surprise us he can ask us to be just like animals though we are not?  It seems degrading to imagine that the human being is just another thing nature has blindly produced like a lizard or a jellyfish and which has no built-in worth or ultimate hope or eternal worth. But who says built in self-worth means a creator has to build it in?  Hypothetically if God himself could appear by chance would that make him any less than what a God should be?

If there is a creator it does not follow its purpose has anything to do with how we treat one another. God being real would not automatically mean we have dignity. That is why the doctrine of God or existence of God is not intrinsically good for us. Religion tries to make it intrinsically good for us which is cruel and manipulative.

To get dignity from assuming there is a God that gives you purpose is a strange way to get dignity!

Christians say morality for an atheist is just opinion for it has no real or ultimate meaning. What do they mean by ultimate? It is a way of saying morality in the end is all that matters and to be all that matters.  It is somehow eternally important.

We know something can have temporary ultimate meaning.  The ice cream you enjoy has ultimate meaning right now for this moment.  Religion is using morality to try and pull you in its doors and keep you there.

Morality can have real meaning without ultimate meaning. Morality cannot have ultimate meaning without having real meaning. You need meaning before you can ask if it is ultimate or not. 

Ultimate value of morality is a way of saying that morality is absolutely important. It opens the door to bringing in rules about things that are supposedly absolutely wrong – that is wrong in all circumstances.  This mixed with religion is dangerous for you end up with notions such as, "Missing Sunday Mass for you want to go to football is always a sin."

Morality can have ultimate meaning even if death is the end. One suspects that by ultimate Christians think morality should be worthless unless it has eternal consequences. They do not however have the decency to take responsibility if somebody does harm over this.  One who tries but fails to think or feel that morality has to be eternally important, could be put off it.  "If morality is not as important as the religion says, then it is no big deal if I murder somebody."

CONCEPTS NOT ENOUGH?

They insist that mere concepts cannot supply a, “You ought to do x” or “You should not do y”. But read what they are saying. A concept should not tell you “You ought to do x”. So there is a should in there after all! Even concepts have a should.

A LITTLE JUSTIFICATION GOES A LONG WAY!

What if atheism instead of having no basis for morality actually has a little? That is fine if a little is all that is possible. Morality is so good that a little is enough to make it justifiable. Believers never mention that.

EVIL BEING ABSENCE OF GOOD

Religion says that good is a power and evil is just when that power is not there and needs to be.  This allows it to say there is a God of goodness who has nothing at all to do with evil.  He doesn't make evil for it is not there.

[Incidentally, they say its a potential evil to use circular arguments.  A murderer can reason, "I will kill x for money for something tells me I am wrong to see this as immoral and that something is right for killing x for money is moral."  Yet they are doing a vicious circle here.  "We do not care if evil is just when a good that should be there is not there.  We will not leave it there.  We want to find a way to use it to defend belief in a good God.  Therefore there is such a God." Getting God to fit evil under that definition is all they want.  They do not care about the definition.]

Let us develop that.  Even religion says that not every absence of good is evil.  It is just an absence.  Is it neutral?  Neutral would mean it is both good and evil and also neither good and evil.  So it does not get us away from a link to evil.  An evil or harm you have to do is still an evil and a harm.  [In relation to the problem of evil, God is responsible for this evil and harm if we have to do it.]

Evil is viewed as the absence of good. But to make a deliberately ugly painting does not make the effort evil. Good is absent but the hideousness of the painting is intended and thus is morally speaking neither good or evil. The argument that evil is the absence of good is a fancy way of saying, “If I want to condemn something as meriting violent eradication in principle if not in practice that makes it evil.” In other words, you are endorsing moral subjectivism. You wanting evil to be evil does not mean it is evil.

Anyway they say it is not evil that you have wheaten bread to eat instead of the tastiest burger on earth.  The doctrine says that evil is the absence of a good that ought to be there and is not.  So if you can see and somebody wilfully blinds you then that is evil.  If a new species of human appeared that does not see and is not "meant" to have eyes, they lack sight but that is not evil.

That makes no sense.  If God designs such a human or delegates the job to us, then that amounts to blinding a person when the DNA is programmed. 

Does that mean then that if you were always blind, blind from birth, that that is evil too?  Are you a lesser being then?  Religion says that evil is falling short of what you can be.  If you are made to use your eyes in the service of others, if you are made to have that chance, then if you are blind you are less than human.  Religion says evil dehumanises.  That is clearly what it is doing here at least up to a point.  In a world of conflict and hate, it is fuelling the fire.

Back to how one time good being not there is fine and the other time this lack is evil.  That is the trouble, it is arbitrary.  In both cases you just have an absence.  So why is one absence called evil and hateful while another one is just an absence that is no big deal?  Just because I want it to be forbidden and wrong to blind somebody does not mean that doing so is evil.  We argue that we stand for moral principles for principles protect.  That is not true at all.  There is no firmness or honesty there to protect anything.

None of it makes any sense. There is the issue then of how religion teaches that to see an evil when you cannot prove it is there is evil for it shows there is darkness in you and you are projecting it.  Projection means you treat what is in you as if it is not and as if somebody else is doing it not you.  Projection means that the evil you point at is actually in you so you need to point the finger at yourself.

Evil and the absence of good are so linked that you cannot really tell then how much in an event or action is meant to be evil or is evil.  It is like looking at yellow paint in a pot and custard is mixed in with it.  As you depend on looking at the void to see if there is evil there you cannot really rely on it.

No matter how much a person does harm, you cannot prove that this is evil or a non-evil absence of good that might only resemble evil.  Perhaps the person is possessed by evil and thus seems evil but is actually deluded by it and thus is not responsible.  Evil needs correct diagnosis and the person must get the benefit of the doubt so proof is needed.  The absence of proof and people acting as if they have got it when they have not, shows that evil is always in the person who points the finger.

If evil is defined as a good that fails to be there when it should be, it is clearly easy to take evil for good or at least as an understandable mistake. The absence of real good means the presence of that which looks good but which is not. Plus people have more motives than they realise for their actions so they can be fooled by motives that they think are neutral or even good. This can and will lead them to justify evil.  At the least they will think they see it as good as it is bad.

Pretend that religion is right though.  What is worse? The absence of good as in evil or the absence of good? Probably the latter.  Why? The latter is an essential ingredient of evil.  Unless good can be pushed out there can be no evil.  Evil appears in the void.  Even if the void were not necessarily evil, it definitely kind of invites evil to emerge.

Notice how if you need a void where there is no good for evil to incubate then it follows that every evil is a mixture of void as in non-evil and void as in evil!  So we will never be able to be clear that what any Hitler did was evil.

Even if evil is an absence of good, it could still be the case that the reason we agree is not because it is true for we want to weaken those who opposite it by watering it down as a void.  Evil if it is the absence of good is not in opposition to good. There is no power there to oppose good. Good is not so good if it is opposing and hating something that is not there. The darkness of evil then is not hostility to good but its merely not being there.

Again we have contradictions.  Human nature both opposes evil and also takes away the reason for doing so.  There is a conflicting psychological projection happening.

TRAIN ARGUMENT

Suppose you can stop a train killing two innocent people on the rail by grabbing a big criminal and throwing them on the track.  The criminal dies but the others are spared. 

Religion says it is wrong to treat even the criminal as an object.  It says one life matters as much as several for life is life.  So it is not a weighing game. You let the train go on its course.

This train argument may seem like an interesting thought about an extreme dilemma.  It is not. It is critical to what morality is about. It shows what it means by value.  If we never meet an event like the train, the principle this shows is still about what comes first for us.  Morality just exposes how it is about doing harm for the sake of a principle.  It shows that morality has a terrible side and thus is not really something to celebrate.  It is best seen as something solemn that we need and leave it there.  It should not be glorified by saying, "God and morality amount to the one thing.  I love and find joy in God so much!"

Human nature celebrates its own moralism and virtue!  Incessantly!

This shows that even when it is being moral, it will not do it without genuflecting to evil. Moral?  "Moral" more like.  It shows how much a person's slamming of evil means they have evil within themselves.

And that is the theme of this piece. Religious moralists are more about protecting their god theory and using morality as a prop to do that than your wellbeing.  Moralists lie about how separate good and evil are.  Morality itself lies about it.  Morality is a word, a useful one perhaps, but it is nothing wonderful.